Polish Jell-O Cake Recipe

My mom use to bring home these Jell-O layer cakes from the local polish bakeries and I randomly got a hankering for them one night (plus I had strawberries that weren’t very sweet), so decided to try and figure out how to make it at home. I just remember the cake being layers of Jell-O, cake and cream. That’s all I got. Luckily it came together and was sooooo good. We finished it within days. I actually prefer baked goods the next day and devoured this over the next week.

I had some problems figuring how to set the Jell-O on top of the cake so it wasn’t as crystal clear as I wanted it to be, but still very edibleJ. And next time I’ll know how to deal with the situation much better (I corrected my mistake in the steps below.

These are the ingredients from memory, but it should be accurate!

Ingredients for cake

1 stick butter

1 ½ cups of sugar

2 cups of flour

baking powder

4 eggs

Salt

Vanilla

½ cup of oil

Add milk until it becomes a thick batter

Ingredients for cream

1 small block of cream cheese, softened

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

2 cups heavy cream

Ingredients for simple syrup

½ cup of hot water

1 TBS of lemon juice

½ cup of granulated sugar

Ingredients for Jell-O

1 box of strawberry Jell-O with lemon juice

Sliced strawberries

Now What?

I made way too much cake, so you can halve the ingredients I used here. If you don’t halve the ingredients, just cut the cake in half the long way and save half in the freezer or munch on the excess while you are waiting for the cake to be ready.

-In one bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.

-In another bowl melt the butter.

-When the butter is melted, mix in the sugar, then eggs, then vanilla and then oil. Add in the flour mixture. Slowly add in milk until it starts looking more like cake batter. Pour into a Pyrex pan (I used a bigger one, maybe 15 or so inches long) and bake at 350 until firm. Mine took about 25 minutes. Just insert a toothpick in the middle, and if it doesn’t bring up any liquid cake batter, then you are good. Wait 5 minutes and then pop the cake out and let it cool off on a rack.

-If you didn’t halve the ingredients, when it cools off, use a serrated knife to slice it in half. Put the bottom half of the cake back into the Pyrex pan, cut side up. If you did halve the ingredients, put the cake back in the Pyrex pan and crumble the top a bit. This will help the cream stay on.

-Make a small box of strawberry Jell-o according to the instructions, add a squeeze of lemon and then put in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

-While that is chilling, make your cream layer. In a mixing bowl, with whisk attachment, put in the block of softened cream cheese and the 2 cups of heavy creamy. Whisk on slow, then medium speed until it is nice and thick. It should stay on the whisk when you lift it up. Add in your confectioner’s sugar and whisk until blended.